Another Pair Of Eyes

Trust

Trust is an interesting thing. It’s all very well trusting someone to do something for a project or to arrange trains to someplace, to trust a doctor to act confidentially or a mechanic to fix your car without ripping you off. It’s another thing when trusting someone or something could get you hurt – the person helping you do a flip for the first time, the brakes on your car, the safety harness on Rush at Thrope Park, the person skydiving with you. It has a different dimension because you have entrusted not just work, organisation or travel to someone but something which if it goes wrong could cause you a lot of pain.* There’s the thing though – if you want to go skydiving, you’ve got to take that leap of faith.

The Raising of the Mary Rose.

*and possibly death in the case of the parachute one, but hey.

Titanic

I described my lovelife yesterday to someone as being somewhat akin to the Titanic. I should add, I think, that my lovelife is not so much a grand and ambitious project to traverse the world as much as it is a rusting hulk at the bottom of the sea. I’m not complaining, I should add: a rusting hulk is at peace and has a certain mystique to people interested in the happenings of long ago. In theory, anyway.

My shipwreck has not been particularly peaceful the last couple of years. It yearned to sail again in all of its former glory, and every time it shifted to try and make the surface it just crumbled a little more under the strain. I think that this has changed.

Normally, around one in every 5 nights out ends with me heading off at 1 o’clock having gotten down over somerandom* and then spending the walk home moping quietly to myself. I get home, go to bed, and wake up the next morning berating myself, either for being stupid the night before or for being morose the next morning.** Such was the way of things.

Last night though, see, I went out. I was with friends, chatted to somerandom for an hour or so, got on very well, all signs signals etc. Suddenly she switched off like a light, and so I went off to see my friends, went home around half 1, and despite having clearly screwed up somehow,*** didn’t care. In fact, I walked the 40 minutes back home feeling remarkably cheerful, and for this I am rather grateful.

I am hoping that this was not just a one off, such that I can let my lovelife rust peacefully into nothing**** rather than watching myself crumble into shards of broken metal in some obscene metaphorical parody of the nihilistic delusions one comes across on psychiatric wards.

That was a mouthful.

Also, while I was looking for the above picture, I came across this which I found rather amusing:

Well, I thought it was funny at least!

*not always a random, technically, but whatever.

**there were also occasions where I was just annoyed at the somerandom. There are reasons, I won’t go into them.

***probably in one of those ways which guys shall never actually understand, and even if they did would seem pretty illogical and a bit petty.

****until such time as a great steamship rises majestically from its watery grave.

Changes

On friday, various things will change. Firstly, a friend is getting married, which is pretty weird. It’s the first wedding in my college friendship circle, and it does have a goodness-we’re-getting-old feeling about it. Slightly surreal. The first, no doubt, of many. Even more surreal. I might be one of them some day. Surrealist.*

The 3rd year of my degree starts on friday, with a lecture on fire drills. Again. This year is attachment based, meaning we’re in various hospitals doing various specialties 8-5 every day of every week plus on-calls, weekends and evenings. I don’t think the EWTD applies to university courses so it could be pretty busy. On top of that, there is all the learning for the Intermediates, which are, relatively, the hardest exams of the course. Oh yes, it’s going to be a good year. I don’t think that was sarcastic, either.

Fitness feels good, even if you can’t use it as much as you might like because of other problems, say knee pain *scowl*. There is something just wonderful about zipping along by bike, legs happily churning away, and feeling completely at ease. No aching thighs, no muscles screaming for release, and the knowledge that you could go on like that for 40 miles without even feeling it.** Good times, and convenient for getting to the shops when your car is in the garage too.

Also, if the apocalypse comes, being able to get places without cars might be handy!

Packing is dull. Unpacking is vastly more interesting – you get to decide what to do with stuff and make everything at least kind of organised before you ruin it all with a year of living. Just for a while, everything is neat and the cables behind the desk aren’t irrevocably tangled into the sort of mess you usually only associate with a malfunction at the wire factory.

On the note of cables, I wheeled out my not-actually-all-that-old computer a couple of days back. I built it myself a while ago and thought I might put it to some use, and now after some tinkering, a trip to the store for some connectors and a new hard drive, and twenty minutes with a screwdriver/ the software equivalent of a screwdriver it works beautifully.*** It will serve as a backup for ALL THINGS and entertain me when I am bored with coloured lights and games. The latter point being the reason it is not coming to uni with me.

Fan-tastic.

*yes, I know it’s not the right use of the word, pffft.

**it gets tougher above 50, and above 80 it starts to require a degree of willpower.

***Although I need to find a grille for the side fan because it keeps trying to cut my toes off under my desk. And I’m having to use a monitor that is about a decade old and takes up most of my desk.

Resignation

I resign. I resign from the waiting and the hoping, the endless up-down oscillation that is always underlying my life, bringing me up and casting me down on a whim. I resign from it.

I reject. I reject the stereotyping, the fact that talking becomes Something, the way that it is impossible to hold a normal conversation with someone other than those you know without some people being stupid. I reject it.

I disregard. I disregard the adrenaline, the pitter-patter of a pulse, the silent signs that wait in the depths of your mind to entrap you, to give you ideas and airs and graces which reality shreds into pieces. I disregard them.

I accept. I accept that things do not work out always, and that there will be other things in other times despite the ever-extending wait. I accept patience.

I wish.

Silent

A couple of weeks ago, in a bid to stop that annoying noise that vibrating phones make on desks/kitchen counter/bedside tables etc, I turned my phone on to silent. Not silent vibrate, or subtle beep, or anything – just silence, abject and total.

It is amazing. I never get that vibration in my pocket telling me to text a reply, I don’t hear the muffled ‘brrrrrr’ when I’ve gone to bed and my phone goes off on my floor, and somehow I feel less under pressure. This doesn’t make a great deal of sense, as I’m not conscious of feeling under pressure when my phone IS on vibrate, but it clearly does make a difference – I feel an increased sense of freedom somewhere down the line. Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it’s probably something to do with not feeling tied in to everyone, all the time.

Strange, in a world where being connected is so very good, it feels so liberating to be difficult to reach.

(Ironic, that I write about it here)

Neighbours

I was woken up at half past four in the morning to the sound of yelling, swearing, anger, sobbing through my bedroom wall. It takes a lot to wake me up in the early hours, but this qualified. I won’t relate to you what sort of things were said; just accept that it was sufficient for me to call the police. I heard three doors slam on their car when they left.

I’m genuinely quite upset. I left this morning and went home. It’s a family living next door. I’m haunted by whether I did the right thing or not.

Last Night

So last night our housemate came down from his room just after we got back from the cube (our union club) and said he’d been woken up by a woman screaming for help. We listened, and there was indeed the sound of screams and yelling. We ran outside, but were beset by fences and walls. A woman was standing outside, she’d called the police. Two cars came.

I wish I knew what happened.